


488. billboards

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [278]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Gen, ish.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 18:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10541652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: There is not an instruction manual for this shit. Emily Post has nothing to say on the etiquette for post-graffiti small talk.





	

The ladder shudders as Helena climbs it – up, up, up, past the point where Sarah can see her. Her backpack rattles as she goes. She’s humming something under her breath; it’s so warped that it’s either a Christmas carol or the Kingdom Hearts theme song. Either one is equally plausible. What the hell is Sarah doing here, at midnight, shivering at the bottom of a billboard and keeping watch while some Eastern European girl she hardly knows goes to vandalize a Chick-fil-A ad.

She cranes her neck back to look up. Helena is nothing but a puff of blonde hair under the hot white billboard-light. Sarah looks back down. She pulls out her phone. She puts away her phone. She shifts from foot to foot, shivers, considers. S is going to _kill_ her if she finds out about this – that Sarah snuck out on a school night to do this shit. The thought is enough to keep Sarah almost warm. She blows on her hands anyways, imagines that she can hear the sound of spraypaint cans being shaken.

_Look_ , she imagines telling Siobhan. _Look_. _You said you wanted me to make friends in Canada—_

No, that wouldn’t work.

_Better than doing drugs—_

Maybe, but probably not.

_Some kids tried to beat the shite out of me my first day here and I had it handled, S, promise I did, but she beat them half to_ death.

That might work. S respects that sort of thing. But Sarah would never tell Siobhan, because the story is true, and that makes it just embarrassing. She should know how to handle herself in fights; she shouldn’t have to be bailed out by the girl in the trucker hat with chocolate smeared around her mouth. But she was, and Helena did, and somehow events have led them here. Juvenile delinquency, only Sarah has already been headed there for a long time.

Friendship, maybe. That one’s new. So new she doesn’t even know if this is it; she sort of doubts it. Friendship involves, what, gossiping? Hanging out? Not standing here spooked and waiting for cops to show up? Helena said she’d done this before, a lot, a lot of times, but Sarah doesn’t believe her at all. Sarah doesn’t really believe anything about her except that she absolutely would have killed that guy if Sarah hadn’t pulled her off. That is the only certainty here.

The ladder rattles again and Sarah jumps. Just Helena, climbing down. The billboard and the plastic cows are covered in markings whose meaning Sarah can’t comprehend from all the way down here; she guesses the job got done. Some help she was. Selling drugs was easier than this shit, honestly.

Helena’s boots hit the ground. There’s paint all over her fingers, until she pulls on an incongruous pair of hand-knitted mittens and the paint vanishes.

“Hey,” Sarah says.

Helena stares at her. “Hello,” she says slowly, like she’s not sure why they’re doing it. _Sarah_ isn’t sure why they’re doing it. There is not an instruction manual for this shit. Emily Post has nothing to say on the etiquette for post-graffiti small talk.

“You…did it, then,” Sarah says.

Helena looks at the billboard, which is obviously covered. She looks back at Sarah. “Yes,” she says.

Cars speed by on the freeway. Sarah can’t see shit. “Look,” she says, “I’m starving, you wanna get McDonald’s or somethin’.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Helena says, only this time she sounds enthusiastic. She goes clomping off into the dark; Sarah catches up to her, shoves her hands so deep into the pockets of her leather jacket that her fingernails scratch on the lining. They’re headed towards Helena’s motorbike, because Helena drove them here on a motorbike, because she has a motorbike. She is without a doubt the weirdest person Sarah has ever met.

“Why are you even doing this,” she says.

Helena looks at Sarah over her shoulder. “Cows and chickens should both be eaten,” she says. “Not one or the other. Both.”

“No, I mean – this anarchy shite,” Sarah says. “I mean – we’re all thinkin’ it, yeah? But back in England we mostly sat around getting high ‘n talkin’ about all the big shit we’d do when we got out of the system. Dunno anybody who actually _did_ anything.”

Helena blinks. “I don’t like the cows,” she says again. She rummages in the pockets of her coat and procures a switchblade. Frowns. Puts it back. Pulls out a set of keys. They’ve reached the bike, then; Helena tosses Sarah a helmet. She has one helmet. Sarah tried to get her to take it on the drive over, mostly because she was worried about her hair, but Helena refused. Sarah buckles the strap under her chin and gets on the death machine.

Helena drives like a maniac. By the time they get to the McDonald’s parking lot Sarah’s life has flashed in front of her eyes three separate times, and it was shitty, and she did nothing that mattered in it. She wasn’t lying, earlier: none of them have ever done anything except smoke cheap weed and talk about how they were gonna do something, be something, all of it incredible. None of the people Sarah knew in England have texted her since she got to Canada. Here she is, under the streetlight, following Helena into McDonald’s.

Sarah gets fries and a terrible coffee. Helena orders three separate milkshakes, two things of fries, a burger, an order of chicken nuggets, and a Happy Meal. She goes for the Happy Meal as soon as they sit down, seems genuinely delighted with the tiny shitty Barbie doll she’s received. She works an oversized plastic comb through its hair as Sarah dumps sugar into her coffee.

“Thank you for coming with me,” Helena says, twisting the doll’s arms back and forth. “Nobody ever has. Before.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says uncomfortably, “’course. Thanks for – helping me out. Before this.”

“They were bad cows,” Helena says. “Too much mooing. I do not like the cows, Sarah.”

“Figured that one out,” Sarah mutters. She eats a fry. It’s a lot less shitty than she expected it to be. She eats another one, feels the warmth of it slide down her throat and into her stomach. She’s focused on trying to open a packet of ketchup without creating a crime scene – so much so that she misses the slow slide of Barbie across the table until the doll bumps into her knuckles. She stares at it. It stares back, grinning with an eerie plastic determination.

“She likes you,” Helena whispers from across the table.

“Okay,” Sarah says, because what else does she say.

Helena’s other hand slowly creeps over, takes Sarah’s hand, and wraps it around the doll. Then she lets go and immediately falls on her food like a starving wolverine. Sarah is left with a handful of made-in-China plastic and fake hair the color of a highlighter. Helena, head down over her food, provides no suggestions.

Slowly Sarah slips the doll into the pocket of her jacket and goes back to eating her fries. It’s possible she could be happy here.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
